


the courage of endurance

by BrittaTheBest



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mid-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-28 15:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11421018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrittaTheBest/pseuds/BrittaTheBest
Summary: Anne gets her foot stuck at low tide, and must try to free herself before the sea comes back in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if this is plausible on Prince Edward Island because I don't know what the ground is like or how high the tides are, but it's a very real danger where I live so here we go
> 
> NB: this is based on the recent television adaptation and so references events from that and also Anne acknowledges Gilbert's existence despite only being 12/13 in this. I have read the first book, but a long time ago.

All in all, thought Anne, as she stood waist-deep in the chill water, the whole affair would have been more tolerable if she had been there for a noble cause. She imagined that someone – Marilla perhaps, or Diana – had lost a great treasure somewhere along the shore, and that she had been searching for it as a service to them. How much more tragical and romantic her plight would be then! But no, she had just been taken with the idea of paddling in the shallows, feeling the water around her ankles and maybe imagining it was a deadly marsh. It was within her normal fare, true enough, but it certainly wasn’t very  _romantic_.

“Help! Oh, help!” she shouted out once more. Only once, mind. From her position, she couldn’t see whether there was somebody on the road at the top of the cliff. It was rather an inconvenience. She had reasoned that it would be more sensible to call out periodically than to waste her voice when there was no one to hear it, else her throat might be too raw to shout when someone really was there. But it was terrible to not be able to see.

“It’s not practical to panic,” she murmured to herself, eyes closed, for what felt like the fiftieth time. She gave another half-hearted tug of her leg, but her foot stayed stuck. At some point in her efforts, she must have twisted her ankle, and now it throbbed painfully at any further attempt. She took a deep breath.

It had been very well to convince herself not to panic when her foot first got stuck in the mire. After several pulls, she had dropped her skirts to free her hands. After three frantic minutes of twisting and pulling, she had even sat down in the water, surely ruining her dress, so that she could get a better angle to free herself. Of course, when it failed she was inclined to stand up again, as it wasn’t pleasant to be sitting in the water fully clothed. She had indulged in a small panic then, but it was easy to console herself with the thought that it would be several hours until the tide came in enough to be a serious problem. There was plenty of time for her foot to come unstuck of its own accord, as things sometimes do, or for somebody to see her.

It had been easy then, but that had been a long time ago. It felt like days to Anne – as it turns out, it’s rather difficult to daydream when one is in mortal danger and distracted by rising water – but in truth, it had been an hour. A whole hour. The water had risen two feet in that time. Less than two hours more, and it would be over her head. She pushed the thought away a little longer, and called out again desperately, cupping her hands around her mouth.

She looked glumly at the spot where she had left her shoes at what was then the water’s edge. She’d watched them float away ages ago. Which meant that when she was eventually free (she made a point to think ‘when’, not ‘if’), she would have to walk home both wet and barefoot. The day had been mild, but it was now tripping the line between late afternoon to early evening, and there was a definite drop in temperature. She called out again.

The water was up to her ribs. It was now reaching the sections that hadn’t been wetted when she first sat down to pull her foot out. The waves were becoming more pronounced too - cold, sudden, forceful splashes up her back that made her gasp. She had been holding her arms across her chest, but now the water lapped at her elbows unpleasantly, and so she folded them in an odd fashion across her shoulders instead. She began to shiver. It was so unfair that this sort of thing just seemed to keep happening to her.  She couldn’t imagine Josie Pye getting stuck in the mud at low tide. It was her own fault, she supposed. That was the worst of it. Marilla didn’t like her venturing too far alone from the road away from Green Gables, and now Anne had proven her right. Marilla would be very disappointed in her when she found out.

“I suppose that in itself could be a romantic tragical element,” Anne said aloud, in hope it would stop her teeth from chattering. “Like a retribution, or a moral. I suppose Marilla will be wondering where I am by now.” Her arms were beginning to ache from holding them out of the water all this time. Actually, she was beginning to feel very tired all over. She wondered how long it had been since she had eaten. Her mouth was by now very dry, and tasted of salt. “Marilla’ll really be concerned when I’m not back by nightfall. Maybe there’ll be a search party. That would certainly be romantic. And I imagine Matthew would stay out half the night looking for me.” She began to cry a little, comforted by the patheticness of her tale. “Not that anyone would be able to find me, of course. It’d be too dark, and I’d… I’d be underwater for most the time, anyhow. And then the next morning, someone would pass by the beach here and see -- and see --” Her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly the story wasn’t comforting at all.

“Help!” she cried out again, the tears from her story turning it into a choking sob. “Please! Someone! He-e-e-e-lp! Help! Oh, please help, please!” She waited, but there was no response. She stopped talking.

Anne didn’t think she’d ever been so cold in her whole life. A queer, tingling, half-numb sensation was spreading from her extremities up her limbs to her core. It made her feel slow, and so very, very tired. Shivering while these sensations were occurring felt positively surreal. She didn’t think she could possibly feel colder were it the middle of winter.

When the waves began to splash up to her shoulder, she began to truly panic. She was generally fairly talented at keeping a level-head in a crisis, and it had served her well so far, for if she had tired herself out through hysterics or passed out in fear, she may certainly have drowned. But there was nothing for her to  _do_. She had tried to free her foot. She had failed. She had tried to get attention. She had failed. There was nowhere she could go, no other action she could take. And now she felt sure she would die here. She would never again get to see the sunrise through her gable window. She began to sob anew, paired with piercing, gasping breaths that made her throat sore. “He-e-e-e-e-lp!” she called again, miserably. “Help, help, please…!” She continued to shout, the words mixing with her tears to form garbled, pained, nonsensical phrases.

By some stroke of providence, fate, or plain good fortune, this outburst happened to coincide with one of the few instances that day where a passer-by passed by on the road on foot. Consequently, the distant shouts did not have to compete with the noise of a horse or carriage, as they had been doing for other travellers, and the person was able to hear Anne’s calls, and was troubled by them enough to investigate.

The person was Ruby Gillis.

Anne could have imagined better rescuers – Ruby was shorter than she was, so wouldn’t be able to come out and help her, and she was prone to hysterics. Besides that, she wasn’t a bit dashing. But at the moment she spotted Ruby picking her way along path in consternation, she could have kissed her, and resolved that indeed she would as soon as she got the opportunity.

“Ruby!” she called, relief flooding out of her mouth and restoring some of the warmth to her body. “Ruby, here!”

“Anne!” called Ruby in reply, hurrying the last few steps onto the beach. “What’re you doing out there?”

“Oh Ruby, my foot’s stuck. I can’t move an inch in-land. Please, Ruby, you must run and get help before the tide comes in any more.” It felt so good to talk to someone who wasn’t herself, even as the water was now splashing against the bottom of her neck.

To her credit, Ruby did not immediately breakdown under the weight of the situation. She took a moment to process what was happening, gave a determined little nod, and ran off again up the path.

Even as Anne knew that Ruby must go or she would be doomed, it pulled at her heart to watch her leave her alone again, disappearing into the darkening evening.

Still, the end was in sight. She tried to keep her breathing regular, though it was becoming increasingly difficult. She was now shivering so violently that she was surprised that her foot hadn’t shaken itself loose. Not that she could feel it. It was hard to believe that she had ever existed anywhere else than there, stuck in the mud and rising water.

It seemed like an age before anything else happened. Far from renewing her energy and spirits, the knowledge that rescue was coming only made her more tired, feeling that perhaps she no longer needed to hold on. It took her several seconds to process that she could see a figure running down the beach towards her, and several more, as he threw off his jacket, to realise that it was Gilbert Blythe. He was halfway to reaching her, wading through the increasingly-choppy water, when she had enough mental energy to suppose that he must have met Ruby on the path.

She felt neither joy nor relief on seeing him. She no longer had the energy to feel anything at all. She watched through half-lidded eyes as he spoke to her, face an agony of concern and panic, stretching and folding with the words, but all she could hear was the undulating rhythm of his voice and the continuing crashing of the waves.

By that time, the water was at her chin, so that she was inclined to lift her free foot at the height of the waves to stay above the surface. Being tethered to the ground on the other side made her float at a queer, diagonal angle, that probably would have been uncomfortable against her twisted ankle if she could still feel it.

Gilbert plunged under the surface. At that moment, she pondered on the fact that she didn’t think she had seen him remove his boots. She thought wistfully of her own lost shoes once more.

He was pulling at her leg. It was a very odd sensation. She was now completely numb, and yet she could still feel Gilbert’s hand pressing into her calf. The feeling, however, was a good inch or so away from the point of contact, rather than on the surface of her skin as might be expected. Almost as if she had somehow worked out how to feel somebody else’s sensations. The sensation stopped. Gilbert emerged for a moment, taking a breath of air, wet hair sticking to his forehead, eyes shut against the sting of the salt, before he disappeared again.

The sun had almost fully set. More people were coming down the path. One continued into the water. Mr William Barry, though Anne had not the presence of mind to identify him as anyone other than ‘Diana’s father’ at that moment. Seeing Gilbert emerge briefly for another breath, Mr Barry instead took up a place behind Anne, threaded his arms under hers, clasped his hands together, and held her up as far out of the water as possible while her foot remained stuck. Anne was very grateful for it, for she had been standing and then half-swimming for several hours now, and fatigue had already caused her to dip below and swallow mouthfuls of water.

Really, she felt now that her part was done. She no longer felt panicked or afraid. She allowed her weight to rest fully on Mr Barry – who may have been saying something to her, though she couldn’t be sure, and frankly did not care at that moment – and allowed Gilbert to dig and scrape around her foot.

The situation no longer seemed to involve her at all. Indeed, it almost felt as if she weren’t really there. She barely even felt cold anymore, and her shivering had almost entirely subsided. She looked out to the beach with a vague neutrality. Something of a crowd had gathered. She wondered idly if Matthew and Marilla were among it. Some of the people held lanterns, which seemed to slide and flicker hazily as waves and salt spray obscured her view. The lanterns, the crowd, and the sense of urgency that she could pick up, even from a distance, all reminded her of the night that the Gillis’ house had burned down. And it was then that something occurred to Anne.

Of course, she thought. This was a dream. It would explain everything beautifully. The distortion of time, the strange sensations, and, now, the detachment. Her memories of that night were informing this story, of course, and no doubt there was all sorts of symbolism. Things in dreams always seem very real and troubling when one was in the midst of them, but now her dream was coming to an end, and she was beginning to wake up. A faint smile touched her lips. Well, no rush, she thought. It  _was_  a very exciting dream. And it wasn’t often that such an exciting dream should be about  _her_ , not her in the future or her as Princess Cordelia.

But neither did she fight the detachment borne of waking, as she was sure she had chores to attend to in the far-off real world. She allowed the hazy, heavy sensation float over her, as Mr Barry held her face and tilted up and away from the still-rising water. She could see his face, but it was very blurry – it wasn’t really there, after all, only in dreams. The stars, however, stretching above him, were crystal clear and beautiful as ever. She supposed she had a better memory of the night sky than Mr Barry’s face. As she looked up at the stars, she allowed the cold to slip away, then the sound, and finally the sight of the stars themselves; lastly, her consciousness drifted entirely away from that plane of existence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry for the wait. The week was busier than expected and then I got a cold, so writing was kinda bleugh. 
> 
> This chapter also just really didn't want to be written. There's a lot of scenes I wrote then took out, some of which I then rewrote, and there was a lot of going back and forth in terms of pacing and timelines and everything. There's not a huge amount of actual action in this chapter, which is why it was originally planned as a one-shot. In theory it all came out okay, though, with a lot of reworking. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy.

Anne awoke very slowly. She must have half-woken several times before sinking back into sleep, for she saw flashes of her room and she felt the time passing in a way that doesn’t happen when one is fully asleep. When she at last came around fully, it was with heavy limbs, warm skin, and a rough throat, as if she had come down with a bad cold overnight.

She looked to her left and saw Marilla dozing in a chair beside her bed, needlework in her lap. The only explanation Anne could think of was that she must have come to admonish her for oversleeping.

“Marilla,” started Anne, causing the other to start awake, “I am sorry to have slept so late, but I’m afraid I’m quite unwell.” Her voice was pleasingly rasping, and thus convincingly ill. “I don’t imagine I’ll be able to do anything today. I’m very sorry.”

Marilla was staring at her, wide-eyed, with a mixed, unreadable expression. Wordlessly, she leant forward, and darted out her hand to feel Anne’s forehead. She took it back. “Anne,” she said, in a brusque, disused voice.

“…Yes, Marilla?”

Marilla stood and hurried towards the door. She stopped, a step away. She turned around. “Anne,” she said again.

Anne thought Marilla was acting very strangely.

Marilla paused for a moment, mouth open, as if searching for something to say. Then, “Do you feel well enough to have a conversation?”

Anne laughed. “I shouldn’t think I would ever be too ill to have a conversation.”

Marilla gave a tight smile in response, and returned to her chair. There was some kind of soft emotion around her eyes, but Anne couldn’t place what it was.

“Do you… remember what happened, Anne?”

Anne considered this very carefully. “No-o-o-o,” she said, eventually. “My thoughts are a bit confused with my dream at the moment. It was very vivid, and frightfully thrilling, Marilla. But I dare say that if you tell me what happened I shall remember it.”

“You nearly drowned, Anne.” Her face was impassive. “You went to the beach, alone I might point out, and you got your foot stuck.”

“Oh!” Anne began to sit up in excitement, but was stopped by an exasperated Marilla. “But that’s what my dream was about. Are you sure that really happened, Marilla?”

“Yes,” she replied, patiently, “I’m quite sure.”

Anne sighed. “And now I have made myself sick, and I shall miss the whole day, and maybe tomorrow. And that’s as well as missing most of yesterday being stuck. It’s so disappointing to not be able to fully enjoy every day.”

Marilla cleared her throat. “You have missed rather more than that, I’m sorry to tell you. You have been delirious with fever for over a week now, which is why I was surprised to find you so lucid. It is now Wednesday.”

“Over a week!” Anne was dismayed. “That’s so many sunrises and beautiful moments to have missed.”

Marilla was unsympathetic. “I should go tell Matthew that you’re awake. I’m sure he’d like to see you. And I suppose I could send Jerry to the Barrys’ and let Diana know too. If I send him on to Rachel’s as well, that should take care of the rest of Avonlea.” She was by now halfway towards the door.

“Oh, wait, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You say I was unconscious for a week – did I get… _many_ visitors?”

“Well, most everyone in town has been worried about you. Several of your classmates have come asking about you. I only allowed Diana to come up to your room, of course.”

“Has everyone been very woeful?” asked Anne, but Marilla caught the glimmer of hope and whimsy in her voice.

“Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, it is not right of you to be wishing tribulation on those who love you. This has been a very trying time for everyone. Not everyone has been fortunate enough to have forgotten the ordeal, as you have.” She left the room before Anne had time to respond. Outside the door, Marilla took a moment to discreetly dry her eyes with the corner of her apron, before heading downstairs and out towards the barn.

 

* * *

 

With Marilla gone, Anne had time to fully take in her surroundings and come to her senses.

The first thing she became aware of was her own condition. She had already noted the general sense of malaise over her body – although she now conceded that perhaps it was worse than a sudden cold, and it included a liquid-y nauseous feeling in her stomach and an ache in all her muscles. She now also felt a greater ache in her right ankle, the foot that had been stuck. There was also a firmness about it, and it was stiff when she tried to move it, leading her to believe that it was bandaged.

Her hair was loose, splayed out on the pillow behind her in a tangle. Her brush was on the bedside table, which wasn’t where she usually put it. She could only assume Marilla had been brushing her hair. The table also held a bowl, a damp facecloth draped over the lip. Next to that was a mug and a candle. It must be true, then. That would be precisely what she might have expected to see next to someone who had been in fever for a week.

There were several other things in the room that were not how she had left them. On the dresser lay Marilla’s needlework, left there the first time she had gone to leave the room. And over in the corner, in her normal vase, was a bunch of daisies. How lovely! She couldn’t imagine Marilla had brought _those._ It must have been another of her guests.

Usually, the book she was currently reading might be found on the bedside table as well, but it had been removed to make space for the other accruements. Not to worry. She was sure she had plenty of imagining to catch up on.

 

* * *

 

Matthew expected the worst when he saw Marilla purposefully emerge from the house and stride towards him, her face carefully and deliberately impassive. Even after she told him her news, even though he knew his sister well and trusted her implicitly, he still scarcely let himself believe it. This was why, when he poked his head around the door of the east gable room, he wore an expression of tepid circumspection, until he looked down and saw Anne with his own eyes. Her smile, sorely missed, was as bright as it had ever been, and he smiled warmly and shyly in response.

“Hullo, Anne,” he said, lowering himself into the chair and taking her hand.

She squeezed his hand fondly in response. “Hello, Matthew Cuthbert. I hope you’ve been well this past week or so, though I have not been able to ask until now.”

“Oh, it’s been alright. Do you feel… well?”

“Perfectly wonderful, thank you, although it turns out the heaviness in my chest isn’t just leftover from my dream as it sometimes is and will be staying with me for the foreseeable future. But I don’t mind all that.”

She chattered on happily with him for a while, her conversational skills not marred by her time spent asleep. Indeed, although it felt to her that no time had passed, it seemed that her mind had been storing up nearly as many thoughts as usual during that time, and had saved them up to spill out of her mouth now before she was even aware of them.

Matthew nodded and commented occasionally, but mainly he just smiled and listened, overjoyed to have his girl back.

Anne was still talking without end when Marilla brought them both supper on a tray.

 

* * *

 

It was several days until Marilla deemed Anne well enough to receive outside guests. The doctor had come on Thursday and assured her that she would be fine so long as she got enough rest, which Marilla, more affected by the ordeal than she would like to admit, had understood as meaning that Anne would instantly fall back into fever should she do anything more exciting than sewing in bed. She would not even let her read initially, as the stories could have over-stimulated her, but conceded after Anne spent a full day begging on the Friday.

Her visitor arrived on Saturday. Marilla would have liked to have waited another day, but it didn’t seem well for her to be socialising on a Sunday, and Anne insisted that she would die of boredom if she had to wait until Monday to see someone who wasn’t Marilla, Matthew, or the doctor.

And so, at 2 pm on Saturday, there was a knock on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” Anne called. She was sitting up in bed in preparation, propped up against the headboard with her pillow. She had put her hair back into its normal plaits that morning.

The door was opened by Marilla. A step behind her, was…

“Diana!”

Diana’s face was tinged pink, full of emotion. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her eyes wet. She stood in the doorway a moment in silence, trembling slightly. “Oh, Anne,” she said at last, and flew across the room to embrace her.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Marilla. “Mind you don’t exert yourself, Anne.” She left.

Diana finally released Anne. “It’s so good to see you awake, Anne. Do you feel well?”

“Almost completely,” she replied, with her old Anne-ish smile. “I feel as if I have a particularly bad head cold. But listen, Diana, I have to ask, though Marilla has told me it’s dreadful insensitive, I really must know, you understand – she said that you visited me while I was senseless – tell me Diana, did you cry at my bedside like in a story?”

“Bitterly,” said Diana, solemnly. “Looking back on it now, I can appreciate how you might think it was romantic. But it was terrible at the time, Anne. I thought you might die.”

Anne laughed. “Oh, I doubt there was ever any danger of _that_.”

“But there was.” Her voice was insistent. “I thought you _were_ dead when my father was carrying you back to the shore. You looked like a rag doll.”

“O-h…” The revelation that Diana had witnessed the event itself stirred excitement in Anne, bringing hundreds more questions she wanted to ask, but something in Diana’s tone sobered her.

“Everyone’s been worried about you,” continued Diana, in a matter-of-fact sort of tone. “Everyone at school has asked me about it, as I’m the only one who’s been in to see you. Josie Pye came here one day, but Marilla wouldn’t let her upstairs.”

“Ugh. Good. I’d hate for Josie to have seen me like that. _She_ doesn’t understand the romanticness of patheticness at all.”

“ _Gilbert’s_ been asking about you too. Although he always catches me when I’m walking home rather than in the middle of class. He hasn’t been speaking much in class at all, not even to Mr Phillips. Gil was there on the night too, you know.”

Anne looked thoughtful. “Yes, I remember. He was unsticking my foot.”

“That’s right.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Well, when you were brought in to the beach, he was trying to get to you to see if you were alright – everyone was – but Mrs Andrews was pulling him away and putting a blanket on him, because of course he was soaking wet too. And you know he’s at his house with his father all the time, so I can’t imagine he’s heard much about you except from asking me. I’d be so worried in his position Anne, I’d simply die. I’m fortunate that Marilla has been sure to keep me informed. So of course when I heard that you were awake and better, I went right to his house to let him know.”

“Oh.” Anne had been enraptured at the start of Diana’s speech, but a slight discomfort had begun to spread through her, and now she was looking at her hands. “I suppose…” she sighed. “I suppose Marilla was right after all. She usually is. But…” she looked to Diana imploringly. “Has it truly been so terrible for everyone?”

Diana nodded gravely. “There was an awful atmosphere in school and church while you were unconscious. My mother came with me here a few times to sit with Marilla while I sat up here with you.”

“What? Why?”

“Oh, well,” Diana glanced towards the door, and lowered her voice. “I’ve not seen Marilla so distressed in my life. I think she had near as many people asking after her as you did.”

Anne did not reply. Her face creased, and her eyes darted, as they did when she was thinking. Then she pressed her lips together, and the creases disappeared as her features burst into a bright smile. “Well, enough of that, I suppose. Thank you for indulging me, and I truly am sorry to have worried you, but I do feel fine now. Won’t you tell me about what I’ve missed in school?”

Diana, of course, obliged.

As she spoke, Anne resolved that she would sincerely apologise to Marilla that evening for the worry she’d caused, and she would become a paragon of responsibility on recovery so that she would not get into such a scrape again. She was able to keep the first resolution, at least.

 

* * *

 

Anne remained bedridden until Tuesday night. Diana came twice more in this time, passing on messages of goodwill, and Jerry crept in on Monday afternoon while she was asleep, scurrying away the second she awoke. On Tuesday evening, she was invited to have supper downstairs with Matthew and Marilla. Her ankle was mainly healed, though she did have a slight limp, which she insisted matched Matthew’s. Her main problem was that lying down for two weeks meant that she tired very quickly, and so, though she was out of bed all day on Wednesday, the furthest she travelled was across the way to Diana’s house after school. She remained absent from school the full week, though she ventured a little further from Green Gables each day. Each time she encountered someone new, she would be obliged to make conversation with them as they asked how she was feeling, and relayed their own experience of the incident to her. Anne was always very appreciative of their concern, but these conversations could go on for nearly half an hour, and it did tire her out.

Therefore, she was relieved when she reached Sunday afternoon. Nearly everyone she had yet to see was at church, and so she was able to get great swathes of well-wishers out of the way in one go, buffered by Marilla and, to a much lesser extent, Matthew. However, one person was not at church that day.

In the week and a half since she had woken up after the incident, she had not seen Gilbert Blythe. It wasn’t so unusual for him to miss church – indeed, it seemed to be happening more and more often – but Anne had assumed that he _would_ be there. Well, she would see him in school the next day. Although, he had been missing school more recently as well. She thought about what Diana had said about him asking after her. She decided she would go to his house.

So it was that she knocked on his front door at 3:38pm that Sunday afternoon. She had to wait several long moments, but eventually the door opened, and Gilbert stood before her.

In the split second that the door first opened, he looked tired and drawn, but his face lit up when he saw her. “Anne!”

Anne though he might embrace her, and took an involuntary step back. “Hi, Gilbert.”

“I… You’re okay! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be home?”

She moved her moth wordlessly for a moment. Why _was_ she here? “I wanted to thank you,” she said at last. “For… saving my life, I guess.”

“Yeah, no, uh, no problem.” He was looking at her almost in disbelief, his mouth slightly open.

“Okay, well. Thank you. But that’s all, I guess.” She turned to leave.

“Anne.”

She turned back.

He gave her one of his crooked, warm smiles. “I’m… I’m really glad you’re okay. I’ve been worried about you.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot recently,” she said with a slight laugh. “But thank you. I’ll see you in school, Gilbert.”

And with that she turned and headed back down the road to Green Gables.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the story lol
> 
> I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on/bookmarked/kudosed the first chapter. It does mean a lot. I didn't originally intend to write anymore Anne with an E fic, but this fandom has been one of the most supportive in terms of feedback, so now I am tempted. If you have any requests/prompts/etc let me know lol
> 
> And also of course if you have any comments/feedback on this chapter or the structure or style or individual scenes or the story as a whole I would love for you to leave them!


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